


The Bonds Between Us

by alohdark



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8159186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alohdark/pseuds/alohdark
Summary: Frank Castle had had a soulmate once. Matt Murdock never would.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is, as per my usual, completely unbeta'd. I was just drowning in the need to write a soulmate au. Because reasons. So this came about.

Soulmates. Suddenly soulmates were all the rage for the media again. It came in cycles, people being obsessed over this or that celebrity meeting their soulmate and the probability of it happening to the average masses. Soulmates in tv shows, in books, in movies, in songs. In every sort of media you could find.  
  
Frank Castle had believed in soulmates once. He knew he had the genetic receptors for it and had actually been one of the lucky few who had actually found theirs. Had found his in a no-nonsense blonde haired, brown eyed girl who’d punched a man twice her size for harassing her best friend at a bar. Frank knew he was going to marry her the moment he went to assist her in defending her friend only to have her turn fiery eyes at him, raising her chin and snapping “The only way you can help, Private, is by dragging his sorry ass out onto the street once I’m done with him.”  
  
In a universe where you don’t know you’ve met your soulmate until that one special moment that bonds you both together forever, be it a word or a kiss or an event, Frank knew he didn’t have to have that moment to have found his. Though the moment did come, in their last kiss before Frank’s first tour of duty, with an engagement ring on Maria’s finger and postponed wedding, that kiss said more than just goodbye. It told them they’d be together forever. Minds linked. Souls forever intertwined.  
  
And then he had lost her.  
  
Lost her. Lost their children. Lost everything.  
  
A very piece of soul shredded and torn from him in a way that will never heal.  
  
So Frank did the only thing he could do. He destroyed himself and everything that Frank Castle was in order to become The Punisher. Frank Castle died in that part with his family. Was buried in the dark with them. His soul never to be whole, or warm, again. 

  
  


Matt knew he had no soulmate. Maybe at one time he could have. He didn’t know. His DNA was a mess of mutations and deformities ever since the accident when he was a child. Scientifically speaking a soulmate bond was just a mutation in DNA that had found a compatible mutation in another. Like a two-way radio finding the pair that was on the same frequency.  
  
Maybe in another lifetime Matt would have even wanted a soulmate bond. To know there was someone out there, be it romantic or platonic, that was your other half. That was a constant presence in the back of your mind who you couldn’t block out or lie to. Who would always know what you were happy or in pain. Maybe in another lifetime that would have been something Matt would have yearned for.  
  
But that was not the life he had.  
  
Most days Matt didn’t even want himself to be inside his own mind, let alone have someone else there. So no, Matt didn’t have a soulmate. Would never have a soulmate. Did not care to have a soulmate.  
  
He was perfectly happy being perfectly miserable all by himself. And when he couldn’t take the loneliness of his own mind any longer, Foggy was the best friend anyone could ask for. Soulmate bonded or not. 

  
  


And then Matt met Frank.  
  
And Frank met Matt. 

  
  


Neither were what the other had wanted in their lives. Frank was so angry, so violent. He had seen the worst in humanity and sought only to destroy it. He couldn’t understand Matt’s obsessive need to give the worst-of-the-worst a second or third or fourth or howevermany chance. Matt believed in the legal system in a way that was fundamentally opposed to Frank’s vigilante justice.  
  
“You can’t take a life to save a life. That doesn’t save anyone!” Matt had yelled at him during one of their first fights.  
  
“You send them to jail, choirboy,” Frank had yelled back during a different fight. “And I’ll just snuff them out when they’re back on the streets doing the same shit all over again.”  
  
Their fights were vicious and bloody, but never deadly. And Frank came to hold a grudging respect for the other man. Matt was passionate in everything he did. From the court room to dirty alleyways. He didn’t do anything halfheartedly. It was a trait that he shared with Maria.  
  
That passion was probably what caused Frank to keep a closer than necessary eye on Matt, both in and out of costume. Frank watched Matt, knowing that even though Frank was watching from a distance, Matt knew exactly where he was. Neither one of them commented on it, but they knew.  
  
Frank gave concession to Matt’s non-fatal methods by taking non-fatal shots when they teamed up to take out groups too big for them to go alone. Matt’s concession was to stop actively stopping Frank from murder but would lecture him after the fight about the need for the justice system to do it’s job.  
  
Matt, for some unknown reason, wanted to ‘save’ Frank. From what, he wasn’t sure. He just knew he needed to try and get Frank to see the possibilities of goodness in the world. Needed Frank to start to believe in the goodness of humanity again.  
  
It wasn’t until Matt saw Frank with a small child that he realized he was doomed. 

  
  


Frank was walking in civilian clothes in plain sight on the city street. Matt was waiting for him on a rooftop two blocks away. As Frank walked a small girl, maybe seven, walked up to him.  
  
“Excuse me.” She said, tugging on his jacket’s sleeve. “My mommy says you help people.”  
  
Matt groaned to himself. Of all the people to recognize Frank in street clothes and comment on it, it would have to be a small girl. He took off running, hoping to cross the rooftops and defuse any situation that could arise.  
  
Frank knelt down slowly so he could look the little girl in the eyes. “I make sure bad people can’t ever hurt good people.”  
  
“Do you help people?” She asked.  
  
“If they need it. Do you need help?”  
  
She nodded solemnly. “My shoe’s untied and I can’t fix it. Can you help me?”  
  
Frank smiled brightly at this little girl and bent over, deftly tying her shoe for her.  
  
She thanked him as Matt jumped down into the alley next to Frank. He waited as the little girl ran off past him. His radar sense wasn’t the best at picking out nuances of facial expressions but this was the first time Matt ‘saw’ a smile on Frank’s lips.  
  
That’s when Matt realized he was falling into something he never felt before. 

  
  


The first kiss, the first fuck, was rough and fueled by adrenalin. Neither had expected it, nor could they say who had initiated it. One moment they were fighting, the next Matt’s legs were wrapped around Frank’s waist as their mouths continued the fight in a much more pleasurable way. They rutted against each other with wild abandon, neither caring that Frank had a black eye swelling and that Matt’s arm was more than likely fractured. They were consumed with the unfulfilled passions that had finally erupted after laying dormant for far too long.  
  
It became a habit of theirs. Every few fights they fought together or against one another would end with an orgasm. It wasn’t anything they spoke about. Neither allowed emotions beyond lust bleed into their encounters.  
  
Not until one night where Matt found his way into Frank’s safe house. Frank wasn’t surprised that Matt could find his way in without setting off any of the traps. But he wasn’t in the mood for visitors. He threw his knife at Matt, the blade just grazing above the top of Matt’s ear and shaving some of the longer hairs there. The threat to his life didn’t stop Matt as he walked into the room.  
  
Frank looked up and saw the darkness in Matt hemorrhaging through his defenses. Frank knew there was something in Matt that drove him to do more, be more, but knew that Matt fought it with every once of his being. It pulled to Frank, but there was nothing he could do. His own darkness too all-consuming. The world was full of scum and Frank did what he did to protect those like Matt. Those idealistic fools who believed in the innate goodness of the world.  
  
Matt opened his mouth, then closed it, clearly searching for the words. Frank just stood up and gentle ran his knuckles across Matt’s jaw. They let actions speak where words couldn’t. It’s not what Matt needs, but it’s all that Frank has to give.  
  
Matt cries in his sleep, Frank doesn’t know why. Won’t ask in the morning. But he curls Matt into him on the small functional mattress. He sleeps restlessly, waking up with every shift of the body beside him.  
  
Matt is still there the morning when he wakes up. He’s already awake and making coffee for the two of them. He hadn’t bothered to put on any clothes and his naked form was dulled by the florescent lights of the windowless room. Some of the marks on his naked body were from the night before, others from fights. The long fingernail gouges down his back were fresh when Frank had discovered them with his fingertips the night before. Now they were red and angry.  
  
“Aren’t these the kind of mornings that rom-com’s have as the moment when people realize they’re soulmates?” Matt asked as he poured them coffee.  
  
Frank’s heart twisted with a stab of guilt and panic. Is this what Matt wanted? His tone was wry, though, so Frank didn’t think so. “You think a soulmate bond would make me stop what I’m doing?”  
  
Matt shook his head and brought the coffee to Frank’s bed. There were no comfortable places to sit other than the bed. “I hope you’ll stop murdering people. If it’s because of a soulmate or you’re just tired of my lectures, I’ll count it was a victory.”  
  
Frank doesn’t know why he said it. Doesn’t know why they were even talking like this. “My soulmate is dead. I do this because of her.”  
  
Matt didn’t give any condolences. Both knew that the words would just be empty. “I think if I were capable of having a soulmate it would have been Elektra.”  
  
Frank sipped his coffee, eyeing the marks on Matt’s back again. He knew Elektra had been back in town for the last few weeks. And not it seemed she made herself known the Matt.  
  
“You came here last night because of her.”  
  
“Yes.” He said. “And no.”  
  
They both took another sip of their coffees.  
  
“I met her last night. There’s a part of me that will always love her. That died with her that day Bullseye killed her. But she’s not that person anymore. And neither am I.” He paused a moment. “I may not love her in the same way anymore but I’ll never give up on her.”  
  
Frank didn’t want to. He had tried so hard to harden his heart the moment he realized that Matt was worming his way inside. But he did. He had fallen head over heals for Matt. It wouldn’t change anything though. Wouldn’t change who they were. And if they tried to change for the other, it would just end up killing them.  
  
Frank shifted his mug to his other hand and took Matt’s in his. His warm palm like fire melting them together. They sat in silence, finishing their coffee. Matt was still naked and sitting on Frank’s sheets. There was a whole novel of words that they could be, should be, saying to one another. But they wouldn’t, couldn’t, speak them. But they knew.


End file.
